Name: Cooking for Others: My Noodle Obsession
Ingredients: 1 1/2 – 2 cups thinly sliced scallions (greens and whites; from 1 large bunches); 1⁄3 cup grated peeled fresh ginger (from about a 5-inch piece of fresh ginger); 1⁄4 cup grapeseed or other neutral oil; 1 1⁄2 teaspoons soy sauce; 3⁄4 teaspoons rice wine vinegar; 3⁄4 teaspoon kosher salt, or more to taste; 12 ounces ramen, spaghetti, lo mein, or noodle of your choice; 1 small eggplant; 1 tablespoon kosher salt; 1 tablespoon olive oil; To make quick-pickled vegetables, slice about 1 cup of any of the above. Put them in a colander with 1 tablespoon of salt for anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour. Rinse and squeeze out all the liquid. Then toss with 1-2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar and 1/2-1 teaspoon sugar, tasting as you the vin; Toasted Sesame Seeds, Gomasio, and Nanami Togarashi; Black Gomasio is a mix of black sesame seeds and salt. It’s delicious sprinkled on top. Nanami Togarashi is a Japanese seven-spiece mixture that includes several kinds of chili peppers and is another great topping. To toast your own sesame seeds, pour 2 tablespoons into a small skillet. Cook over me

Why it works: Eggplant and sesame share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Eggplant + sesametop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together43 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Eggplant + olivetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ginger + sesametop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,531 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Olive + sesametop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,111 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ginger + eggplanttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together103 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the eggplant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, sauce, rice wine, vinegar, olive, sugar, sesame):

Capsicumfits better
Welsh onionfits better
Broccolifits better
Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sauce, rice wine, vinegar, olive, sugar, sesame. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Rice	1 cup cooked (158g) white	206
Vegetable	1 tbsp (14g)	120
Sesame	1 tbsp (14g)	120
Olive Oil	1 tbsp (14g)	119
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Onion	1 medium (110g)	44
Eggplant	1 cup cubed (82g)	35
Wine	2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)	25
Soy Sauce	1 tbsp (15ml)	9
Chili	1 tsp (2.7g)	8
Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Vinegar	1 tbsp (15ml) distilled	3
Ginger	1 tsp grated fresh (2g)	2
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Toasted Sesame Seed	not in our table	0
Black Sesame Seed	not in our table	0
Topping	not in our table	0

Cooking for Others: My Noodle Obsession